Vintage styles on Project Runway's runway.

I'm not going to write about PR Episode 11 in any detail because I didn't like it. It was too full of gimmicks -- returning auf'd designers, black-and-white only palette, instructions to use every scrap of material instructions -- and the resulting garments were awful. As the series progresses you can see the fatigue setting in, and I don't expect the garments produced in next week's episode to be any better. But most of all, whatever is produced on the shows is old news because New York runway shows for the final four designers has already taken place, and those are the garments that count.

You can see the four collections at NY Magazine Online. From the photos, I liked the viewer-selected evil Jeffrey Sebelia's collection best. Then I saw about 60 seconds of video on the Style Channel's fashion week coverage, and I thought Michael Knight's collection looked best, even though I thought the same stuff looked terribly hoochie-mama in the still photographs. I'm sure the judges, who get to see the collections close-up and personal, will see something entirely different from what the rest of PR world sees (gawd knows they have all season) and pluck a winner out of the air. What evah.

The collections caught my attention for two reasons: the vintage references, and the attention to current trends. In the first two seasons the designers made clothes as if they lived in a vacuum. This season, at least they did a few things "real" designers were doing, like using lots of white and metallics. Hey, if Marc Jacobs does it, it must be good, right?

Vintage is a trend, too, and it was the vintage inspired dresses that really "turned me on," to borrow one of Vinsane's vintage expressions. In the pictures at left, from top to bottom, there's Michael Knight doing YSL safari, Vincent Sebelia doing 50s New Look, Uli Herzner doing 1960s Mod and 1970s disco caftan. Wheee! What a treat!

I don't think I've seen anyone who's chosen Uli as the winner of PR because she's been making the same kind of dress all season, but win/lose/schmooze, I bet her dresses will sell like crazy. Her designs have "Rachel Zoe" written all over them, and I can so see Nicole, Lindsay, Mary Kate, Nicki blah blah blah wearing them. In fact, I would LOVE to see the aforementioned persons wearing Uli -- well, maybe not, there'd be a lot less material for the Fug Girls.

There was a fourth collection, by super-mom Laura Bennett, but I found it more Morticia Addams than anything else and -- well, that's all I have to say about it.